Star Wars: Bad Ground
by WordSmith1994
Summary: It is time for Grand Moff Tarkin to repay a long-standing debt to Darth Vader, and settling what is owed will require every last bit of his cunning ... and will cost more than he ever imagined. A re-imagining in prose of the events of the comic issue Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith 18: Bad Ground.
1. Before the Hunt

_A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …_

**STAR WARS: Bad Ground**

**Before the Hunt**

_Imperial Palace, Coruscant, 13 BBY_

"Rise, Lord Vader."

Getting to his feet, his breathing loud in the almost silent throne room, Darth Vader looked up to the throne where his master sat flanked by red-robed guards and wearing an impassive, unreadable expression. Had it been any other being, Vader might have used the power of the Force to detect what they were thinking and feeling. But he dared not invade his master's mind. Darth Sidious would certainly detect any attempt to do so, and would meet it with a dark violence that even Vader could not match.

"My congratulations on the successful intervention of our military forces on Tervissis, Lord Vader," the Emperor said, smiling down at his black-armoured apprentice. "Another world brought into the order of the Empire is a cause for celebration indeed."

Vader said nothing, merely inclined his helmeted head. Tervissis had been a holdout of Separatist and anti-Imperial sedition ever since the end of the Clone Wars, and its final fall had brought him great satisfaction. Vader's crimson-bladed lightsaber had delighted in its grisly work, and Vader remembered again how he had brought deaths – cruel deaths – to the Neimoidians, Skakoans, native Tervigs, and whatever other species and droid models had stood before him. His thoughts were clear in his mind, and his master smiled. As always, he knew what Vader was thinking.

"You have not enjoyed yourself like that for a long time, my friend," he said with a twisted leer. "You earned it, Lord Vader."

Vader never enjoyed anything, had not enjoyed anything since his fiery rebirth on Mustafar. But it was true that death was the only thing that now gave his life purpose. Death, and the Empire.

"I am pleased to have served the Empire, Master," Vader said, bowing his head once again.

The Emperor rose from his throne and descended the steps to where Vader stood. He stopped level with the cyborg, and despite the gulf in height the Dark Side radiated from Vader's master such that it would have been clear to any observer which of them was in command.

"You are a mighty weapon in the Imperial fist, Lord Vader," the Emperor said, placing a gnarled and withered hand on Vader's alloy shoulder. "And if you would have a boon for this latest action in service to our New Order, then I will grant it."

_He knows already_, Vader thought. _He knows why I am here. Of course he does._

"Master, I ask your permission to participate in a hunt."

The Emperor regarded Vader with something that may have been surprise.

"A hunt, Lord Vader? Did I hear you correctly?"

The Emperor let out a cackle of laughter that echoed around the empty room. It was a dry, rasping sound, and beneath the black cowl of his robe the eyes that were fixed on Vader seemed to glow for a moment.

"Yes, I can see it now, my friend. Darth Vader, right-hand to the Galactic Emperor and Dark Lord of the Sith, mounted astride a strapping Fathier and leading a pack of Kath Hounds, hunting a lone Vulptex through the grasslands and forests of Alderaan, Viceroy Organa and his young daughter at your side."

The Emperor cackled again. Vader was unresponsive. He simply waited for his master to return his attention to him.

"But no," the Emperor said at last, "this is not the hunt you speak of. I would have more details, Vader, before I agree."

"It concerns Grand Moff Tarkin."

Vader sensed rather than saw the Emperor's interest piqued.

"Does it? He does certainly have a penchant for the hunt."

"He told me of his past on Eriadu, the brutality of his upbringing. I would make use of it. With every Jedi that I or the Inquisitors slay, I am denied another worthy opponent."

The Emperor smiled at Vader, a smile devoid of warmth.

"You believe that Tarkin will be a worthy opponent."

It was not a question, and so Vader did not answer. Instead he slowly inclined his head.

"You would have Tarkin hunt you, Lord Vader? On Eriadu, or on another planet?"

"On a world of the Governor's choosing. I will adapt to the situation."

The Emperor regarded Vader with something like calculation, as though he were seeing in his mind all of the possible results of this meeting. Finally, he gave a curt nod and said, "Very well, Lord Vader. I consent."

* * *

Vader found Tarkin three standard days later at the headquarters of Imperial Intelligence, not two kilometres from the throne room where the Emperor had granted his apprentice's request. Vader had not announced himself, but nonetheless Tarkin seemed unfazed as the tall, hulking armoured body emerged into the room. He was wearing the immaculate grey uniform that he had personally designed on Sentinel Base the year before, his legs apart, gazing out of a circular window in the direction of the smog-shrouded Works district. Everything about the Governor spoke to the rigid military discipline that Vader knew first-hand was as signature to Tarkin as were his gaunt cheeks and piercing stare.

"Desolate, is it not?" Tarkin remarked as Vader came to stand beside him at the window and gazed, too, toward the distant, towering smokestacks and decrepit buildings that were the hallmarks of Coruscant's industry. "Best to raze it to the ground and begin anew."

"The Works has its uses for now," Vader replied. "But I agree that it is a blight."

For long moments neither of them said anything, until finally it was Vader who broke the silence.

"I am calling in the debt you owe me for Mon Cala. I wish for you to hunt me, Governor. On a world of your choosing, with whatever methods you think best. Kill me … if you can."

Tarkin might have quirked a small smile at Vader's words, but if he did then it was only for a heartbeat before his thin lips once again rearranged themselves into the perfectly straight line that was the Eriaduan's custom.

"I have hunted many fine beasts, Lord Vader," Tarkin replied, without looking at the Dark Lord. "Veermok. Nexu. Reek. Even a Rancor. But I do not believe that I have ever hunted prey as fearsome as the man I stand with now."

Vader had long wondered whether Tarkin knew who he was beneath the helmet, whether the Grand Moff knew that Vader had known him when he had lived a different life. Tarkin was certainly intelligent enough to have reached all sorts of perfectly plausible conclusions regarding Vader's identity and past, but he had never let on about any of them. At least not to Vader.

"No. You have not."

Tarkin finally turned to face Vader. Significantly taller than the Emperor though he was, Tarkin still did not reach eye-level with Vader, and was obliged to look up toward the blank, black lenses that served as Vader's viewports. But, just like Vader's master, Tarkin was unintimidated by the being that so many trillions of beings spoke of in hushed and terrified tones and preferred to believe was not real.

"I accept, Lord Vader," Tarkin said. "I the hunter, you the prey. I suggest Chandar's Folly. Do you know it?"

Vader did not reply. He simply swept from the room, his black cloak billowing behind him, the sound of his breathing following him from the chamber.

* * *

Tarkin spent the next several standard weeks preparing for the hunt of a lifetime. The prospect of going toe to toe with a Sith Lord was as exhilarating as anything he had ever attempted in his life. Vader seemed to have been made for killing. No, he _had _been made for killing. Tarkin had witnessed the black-clad cyborg deal death with his lightsaber, at the controls of a starfighter, and with the strange power of the Force. No creature, no matter how large or well-armed with teeth and claws, even came close to the raw power that Vader brought to bear against his foes.

Yet Tarkin was nothing if not determined, and he prepared himself vigorously for the task ahead. He reviewed all that he knew of Vader from their missions together on Murkhana and other worlds. He read the reports of officers that had been assigned to Vader's command, and the testimonials of prisoners who had been subjected to interrogation at the Dark Lord's gauntleted hands. Tarkin had even considered going to the Emperor for a unique insight into the way that Vader thought and, crucially, fought, but had ultimately decided against it. The Emperor was to be kept above such matters as the petty distractions of his underlings.

As well as researching his quarry extensively, Tarkin had also set about recruiting the most elite of the Galaxy's hunters to assist him, with the promise of glory, credits and blood as the prize for success. He had considered Boba Fett, but deemed the young aberrant clone to be too inexperienced and headstrong for such a hunt. He had thought to contact Cad Bane, who had specialised in hunting Jedi during the Clone Wars, but the Duros bounty hunter seemed to have vanished into the vacuum of space and had been neither seen nor heard of by Imperial Intelligence since the end of the war.

When bounty hunters had proven to be a dead-end, Tarkin had instead taken to trawling the hunting clubs and lodges of those worlds which were particularly known for their dangerous game.

On Tatooine, he had found Gil, a Human male who had made his name by successfully hunting and killing one of the desert planet's massive Krayt Dragons on his own. After verifying Gil's methods and tactics, Tarkin had made him the first member of the hunting party which, he hoped, would be enough to take on Darth Vader. The Shadowlands of Kashyyyk had offered up Vrysst and Knarrll, Trandoshan brood-brothers who had made a small fortune for themselves by hunting the native Wookiees, as well as their Chadra-Fan trackers, Hardhear and his grandson Sissian. On Ryloth he had recruited Twi'lek Drenn Dalron and his Human lover Yerga. Myrkr, Hoth, Onderon and its jungle moon of Dxun, Dromund Kaas, Ylesia and Malastare had all produced hunters of sufficient skill to meet Tarkin's criteria, and soon he had a team of twenty – nineteen hunters and himself.

Surely sufficient to match a Lord of the Sith.


	2. Day One

**Day One**

According to popular legend, Chandar had been a Moff of the ancient Sith Empire in the decades it had spent warring with the Republic and the Jedi Order. Tasked by the Sith Lord Darth Marr with the conquest of the planet – then a thriving world of industry and agriculture called Jaradin – Chandar had decided that the most direct approach would be the best.

And so he had commanded the battleships under his command to reduce the planet's surface to a wasteland, millions of turbolaser bolts raining down on the world over the course of a standard week. Jaradin, it was said, had been home to five billion beings one day, five million the next, five thousand by the end of the onslaught. Every structure on the planet had been levelled, its biodiversity all but annihilated. Even the atmosphere and weather patterns had been altered. When the Moff and his troopers had landed planetside, they had found a world as dead as Korriban, as desolate as Tatooine, and as storm-ravaged as Dromund Kaas.

"Glorious," was all the Moff was recorded as having said in the time that he had spent on the planet's surface before returning to his capital ship.

Darth Marr, however, had not agreed with Chandar's assessment. He had wanted a world of industry and populace, a world that would be a great asset to the Sith war effort. Instead, he had been left with a world of no use to either the Empire or the Republic, and a gaping wound in the Force that the Moff was unaware of, but which every Sith Lord and Jedi in the Galaxy would feel forever afterwards.

Chandar had said it was glorious. Marr had said it was folly, ordered the name of the planet to be changed to Chandar's Folly on every Imperial map, astrograph and starchart, and had executed the offending Moff by sending him to die on the planet's ravaged surface with neither food nor water. When Marr had returned three standard months later, and found Chandar's desiccated remains, he had ordered a metre-tall stone to be erected at the spot and carved with the single word 'glorious'.

Now, rather than the Star Destroyers of the old Sith Empire, it was Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin's personal starship the _Carrion Spike _that was suspended in orbit above the barren surface of Chandar's Folly, waiting for a signal from its commander to collect him and whoever else might be accompanying him off-world. The nature of the ragged band that Tarkin had brought with him aboard the _Carrion Spike _had never been made known to her crew members, but all of them were familiar with Tarkin's penchant for hunting big game, and the look of the cadre of beings who had been with them for the short journey from Coruscant had suggested that they were like-minded in that way.

Chandar's Folly was home to a beast of particular note to hunters across the Galaxy, given its reputation as an especially difficult hunting target. The Valath was a five-metre tall repto-mammalian creature of many colours, which as well as being armed with terrifyingly sharp teeth, claws and enormous wings capable of powering sustained flight, also possessed the most advanced camouflage method of any creature in that part of space. Chromatophores on every part of its skin allowed it to take on exactly the colour and texture of its surroundings, rendering it for all intents and purposes invisible. Tarkin was happy to let his crew assume that Valath were his target on Chandar's Folly.

On the planet's surface, lightning storms raked the sky with violent and ferocious regularity. Black clouds permanently hung overhead, and although the planet's plant and animal life had recovered somewhat in the more than three millennia since Chandar's orbital bombardment had all but killed the world, food and water were still hard to come by. Their rations would last them a standard month, after which they would comm the _Carrion Spike _for further sustenance. But Tarkin hoped it would not come to that. He would see the hunt taking as long as that as a defeat.

As fresh rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning disturbed the atmosphere, Tarkin and his nineteen fellow hunters pitched camp in the shadow of a rocky precipice. Where Vader might be Tarkin did not know, but he was sure that Vader would be easy enough to track. The Dark Lord's heavy metal boots and loud rasping breathing would give him away to even the merest hunter, and Tarkin's assembled party were far from the merest. This was an assortment of the finest hunters in the Galaxy, and they knew how to look out for quarry and how to ensure that their sleeping quarters were adequately set up and defended.

While tents were pitched and the droid SKD-81 prepared a campfire, Tarkin posted the two Chadra-Fan, Hardhear and Sissian, to opposite sides of the camp. The diminutive mammals might have looked out of place among the Humans, Trandoshans and assorted others that made up the hunting party, but Tarkin knew that the Chadra-Fan were indispensable. Their ears were refined enough to hear Vader's breathing from several kilometres away, and at closer ranges to pinpoint exactly from where the sound was coming from. Tarkin and his hunters would know of Vader's presence long before they reached him – and before he reached them.

"Have you heard anything, Hardhear?" Tarkin asked the older Chadra-Fan, whose bat-like nose was twitching as he scented the air.

"No, Boss Tarkin," Hardhear answered, his Basic accented. "Dark Demon nowhere near. Sissian no hear him neither."

"You're sure?" Tarkin asked.

"Very sure, Boss. No Dark Demon."

Tarkin was not sure whether he felt relief or frustration. That Vader was nowhere nearby certainly suggested that he and his team would live to see the following day. But he hoped that it would not be too long before the black-armoured Sith Lord revealed himself. His blaster finger was already starting to twitch with anticipation.

"Alert me if you hear anything," Tarkin said.

"Yes, Boss Tarkin."

Tarkin moved to where his other hunters were finishing assembling sleeping tents, and where the food the droid was preparing was beginning to smell good enough to be edible. He reached into the pocket of the hunting jacket he was wearing – his favourite, the one he always wore whenever he hunted on Eriadu – and pulled out a datapad. He scrolled through it, reviewing the allocations of duties to his various team members.

"We will eat and then begin first watch," he said to the group at large. "The light is already failing so we must be up with the dawn tomorrow. I have never known Vader to need either rest or sustenance, but if we are tired and hungry then our work will be shoddy, and that will mean death. Now, we too have in our team one who needs neither sleep nor food." Tarkin inclined his head in the direction of SKD-81. "Eighty-One will be on lookout constantly through the night. But I will not trust the eyes or photoreceptors of just one being or droid. Hardhear, I want you on first watch with Knarrll, Tyland and Stav. At the first moon's zenith you will wake Sissian, myself, Yerga and Gil. After four standard hours we will rotate with Dalron, Vrysst, Lamna and Turneen. A copy of the watch rota will also be uploaded into each of your datapads." He surveyed the group, all of them looking at him with passive expressions. "Does anyone have any questions? No? Then we will eat."

"I have a question, Governor."

It was Gil, the lank-haired Human who had managed to down a Krayt Dragon. Tarkin regarded him with a piercing stare, but Gil seemed merely bored.

"Why are we armed with these archaic slugthrower weapons? What's wrong with a decent blaster? And flamethrowers? Some might say this is overkill, Governor."

"And I would say that I have witnessed our prey in combat several times and I have made my decisions accordingly," Tarkin replied curtly. "Do you remember the Jedi, Gil? It has not been so long since they were wiped out, and you are – forgive me – hardly a young man. You remember, I trust, all those HoloNet reports about the battlefield exploits of Kenobi and Skywalker. How their lightsabers would deflect every blaster bolt that came speeding their way."

"Are you saying that Vader is a Jedi?" asked Yerga. "Is that why we are hunting him?"

"No, Yerga," Tarkin replied. "Not a Jedi. But he is their dark counterpart, every bit as skilled with that peculiar magic of theirs as they were. And believe me, his skill and ferocity with a lightsaber are beyond anything I ever saw in a Jedi. And I fought beside them." Tarkin inhaled deeply, aware that he had the rapt attention of every being in the campsite. "Vader's lightsaber renders our blasters irrelevant. If you fire a blaster bolt at him you will likely die when he ricochets it back toward you. Until such time as we can relieve Vader of his lightsaber, if such a thing is even possible, then we will use slugthrower weapons and flamethrowers. I never once in all the years I fought alongside the Jedi saw their energy blades deflect fire."

Tarkin did not let on about his suspicions regarding Vader's past or identity. The information that he had perhaps guessed who Vader was, what had become of Anakin Skywalker during the events surrounding the Jedi Uprising at the end of the war, and the true nature of the Emperor was not something that he wanted Vader or even the Emperor to be aware of.

"Everyone hasss a weaknesss," hissed Knarrll, his long tongue sliding over his sharp teeth.

"Fire isss Vaderr'sss," answered his brother.

Tarkin gave the two Trandoshans a nod.

"Just so, brood-brothers. And it is that weakness that we will use against him when the time is right."

"Dark Demon die soon," said Sissian, his overlarge eyes glinting with eagerness.

Tarkin repeated the final word, though if he was honest with himself he did not share the young Chadra-Fan's optimism.

"Soon."


	3. Day Two

**Day Two**

The Thurian Trees, their purple leaves formed into the shape of a dome so that they seemed to sit atop of the trunk, shook so violently in the latest storm to wrack the planet that one might have thought they would be torn up by the roots. Avian lifeforms took frightened flight as their nests were disturbed or even wholly destroyed by the gale winds, and the land creatures hunkered down in their dens, sets and burrows to wait out the assault.

Vader scarcely noticed the storm. To an observer he may have appeared to be stood with his black-armoured body straight-backed, his legs apart and his arms folded across his chest. But in truth, he was nowhere to be found in the mundane world.

Immersed in the Dark Side, in commune with it so deep and profound that he was more primordial force of nature than either man or machine, Vader had lost himself in a landscape every bit as harsh and unforgiving as the surface terrain of Chandar's Folly. Except that the realm of the Dark Side, the shadowed equivalent of the Jedi's fabled Netherworld of the Force, was a place where Vader felt familiarity, recognition. Almost at home.

Flashes of past, present and future showed themselves to him. A small boy winning a pod race on a desert world. A gold-robed being bisected by the blue shimmer of a familiar lightsaber as it flew across a vast room. His master pouring Sith lightning from his fingertips onto a figure in black that writhed in agony on a metal floor.

He was wrenched out of his dark reverie by a ripple in the Force, a warning from the Dark Side. Tarkin and his hunters were coming.

Let them, Vader thought. Let them come here, let them find him. Let them feel the Dark Side, and the wrath of a Sith Lord.

Let them die.

* * *

Even in the midst of a gale, Vader was an easy beast to track. His heavy boots left deep imprints on the ground, his loud, mechanical breathing was a constant sound in Hardhear and Sissian's ears, and wherever he went there was a strange chill, a sense of foreboding, left behind, lingering on as if in the Dark Lord's footprints.

And death was never far from Vader.

"More of them here," Gil said, pointing to a whole pack of Gorehounds, their butchered corpses severed multiple times and cauterised instantly.

"Lightsaber wounds," Tarkin mused. "Vader's weapon of choice when he is not using his dark magic."

"Boss Tarkin," interrupted Hardhear. "We hear Dark Demon."

"How close?" Tarkin asked the Chadra-Fan.

"Very close, Boss Tarkin," Hardhear replied. "Trees a kilometre ahead. He there."

Tarkin took hold of the macrobinoculars he was wearing about his neck and held them up to his eyes. He directed his gaze in the direction of the Thurian Trees that Hardhear had indicated, and saw Vader's armoured form stood in the midst of the swaying trees, seemingly impervious to the storm that battered everything else for kilometres around.

Tarkin had known ever since he had first met Vader in the weeks following the conclusion of the Clone Wars that here was a being who would not break easily. But to be unmoved by a wind that was making even Tarkin and his band of experienced hunters bow their heads and huddle into their coats seemed to the Grand Moff to be emblematic of Vader's wider nature. He would be a formidable foe indeed.

"We have to wait for the wind to drop," Tarkin said, raising his voice to be heard above the gusts. "Fire will be useless in a storm this strong, and I think that may be our key to defeating Vader."

They found scant shelter in the slope of a small hill, and huddled together for warmth until the storm abated. Tarkin curled his nose in revulsion at the smell coming from some of his fellows, but did not voice his feelings. Their priority was Vader, not hygiene regimens.

Eventually the wind died, and Tarkin looked again toward the place where Vader still stood, in exactly the position he had held when the hunting party had found him.

"Fire suits," Tarkin ordered. "And flamethrowers. Eighty-One," he said to the droid, "calculate the best approach tactic to enable us to encircle our quarry. And I want four volunteers to handle the flamethrowers."

He had been about to expand upon the dangers involved, that the flamethrowers' limited range would mean getting closer to Vader than most beings would ever dare to if they valued their lives. But before the words had left his mouth, the Twi'lek Drenn Dalron, both Trandoshan brothers and Lamna, a female Benathy who specialised in hunting the massive reptilian predators of her homeworld, had all stepped forward, eager to don the white protective suits and strap the gas canisters to their backs. Tarkin had held back the warnings he had been about to give; if they were so eager, why dampen their desire to unleash fire on Vader?

SKD-81's analysis called for a tactic of distraction and ambush, or 'bait and switch' as Gil put it. Tarkin and a selection of his fastest and most agile hunters would get Vader's attention and lead him deeper into the Thurian forest, to a small clearing that the droid's readouts showed was ideal for the ambush.

Tarkin had his reservations about the plan; he had known Vader, both before and after he had taken to donning his armour, to be able to detect the presence of hidden beings through the Force. But he had also seen Jedi during the Clone Wars who had become so focused on the target before them that they had neglected to use or to heed that additional sense. And how many of them had, at the end of the war, sensed their impending deaths at the hands of their clone troopers in time to avert their fates?

As not only a Grand Moff and Oversector Governor, but also as Battle Station Commander charged with oversight of Project Stardust at Scarif and Geonosis, Tarkin had high enough security clearance to know exactly what had happened on the day that the Emperor had sent the command out to clones across the Galaxy to execute Contingency Order Number Sixty-Six. Some of the after-action reports and debriefings had been among his research reading in preparation for hunting Vader. He still remembered the names of a few of the clone officers whose accounts he had found most striking. Cody, who had blasted Obi-Wan Kenobi with the main cannon of an AT-TE walker. Neyo, who had allowed his BARC speeder to fall behind that of Stass Allie in order to attack her from the rear. Bacara, who had ordered his Marine Corps to fire at Ki-Adi-Mundi on Mygeeto, though in that instance the Jedi had at least had enough forewarning through the Force to attempt to defend himself. All of them had presented compelling and informative reports to their military superiors and to Imperial Intelligence.

But unfortunately for Tarkin, he did not possess an entire corps of marines, nor a BARC speeder, nor an AT-TE assault walker. But what he did have were nineteen of the Galaxy's best hunters, as many slugthrower weapons and blaster rifles, and four flamethrowers with accompanying protective suits.

These last had been inspired by the report of one CC-4966, who had been known to the clones under his command as Tracyn. Assigned to the dry savannah grasslands of Teresha, Tracyn had taken to using specialist flametroopers to assault fortified Separatist locations, and had then turned those same flametroopers on his Jedi General Vaeric Thero when the kill order had come through on the Supreme Chancellor's private frequency. Tracyn's report had stated, in a tone that Tarkin could have almost identified as glee, that Thero had burned to a crisp, his lightsaber melted by the intensity of the heat.

Tarkin did not truly believe that the same would happen to Vader. But at present, he could think of no better approach. And what were the lives of four of his hunters, non-humans all of them, if it meant that Vader was weakened a little. The rest of the hunt might go that much easier.

He kept every one of these thoughts firmly to himself as the Twi'lek kissed his Human lover before putting on his protective suit, and as the Trandoshan brood-brothers said a prayer to their strange deity, the Scorekeeper. What did it matter? What did any of them matter? Only two beings on this world were of any consequence – Vader and himself. This was a contest between the two of them.

* * *

The movement was picked up by Vader's Force senses long before his eyes and helmet's optical sensors. Half seeing, half sensing the presence of the seven beings who were his predators, he set off toward them. Death and the Empire were the only two things that now gave his life purpose. And the Empire did not have a presence on Chandar's Folly.

His movements were slow and deliberate. Speed was something that his armour forced him to forgo, but in return he was unstoppable, and he knew it. Blaster bolts either deflected off his lightsaber or off his armour. Slugthrower weapons, likewise, made but scratches and dents on his metal body, and the vibroblade did not exist that could pierce his protective shell. Even lightsabers, he had found, could not cut through his armour like they did almost everything else, though they were not to be underestimated either. Vader was a fortress in the body of a man, a dealer of death and fear, and he revelled in it.

He could sense their fear now. His breathing was loud inside his helmet, as it always was, but their fear was even more apparent to him. Some of them loosed shots at him, the loud reports of their weapons telling him that they were slugthrowers. Tarkin had at least had the sense not to attempt the use of blasters, for which Vader had to give him some credit. Even so, the Force allowed him to see the bullets as though they travelled slowly through water, and the crimson blade of his lightsaber met and melted each one before it reached him.

Darth Vader advanced and they ran and he advanced and they ran. Thurian trees all around him, their occupants taking hasty flight away from the devastation they could sense was imminent, he passed beneath their branches and canopies. More reports from slugthrowers, more melted projectile remnants hitting the ground and smoking there. Vader could see Tarkin himself at the centre of the group, running into what looked to be a small clearing in the trees, and his pace quickened slightly. It would be a shame for the hunt to end on only its second day, but then the proof would be there that Tarkin had always been unworthy.

The trees thinned, and Vader found himself standing in the clearing, watching as Tarkin's party separated and each ran in a different direction. Vader started after Tarkin himself, apparent in his unique hunting jacket, when the Dark Side made him aware of a threat to his rear.

He turned just in time to see the flames rush toward him. The heat was so intense that he felt it on his skin, through his armour. His skin, so familiar with the touch of fire, seemed to shrink back as if in fear, and Vader realised that he too was shrinking back. Mustafar flashed before his eyes as another wave of fire engulfed him, this time from a different direction, then another and another. Four jets of searing flame assaulted him from every side, and Vader knew pain as he had not felt since his rebirth on the lava flows.

But that was their undoing. They did not understand the Dark Side, nor how it gave strength to its adherents. The pain.

Vader let himself feel the pain, let it wrack his body. Then he drew on it like a thirsting man taking water from a river, and focused it in his pain. He concentrated his mind, even as the flames licked at his cloak and armour once again and his skin began to blister and crack as it had done years earlier. There were four of them, only four. They wielded flamethrowers made by BlasTech, of the sort that had been issued to the flametroopers of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars. In another life, Vader had seen these weapons used in combat many times, and he knew how they worked.

He could not attack the flames, not even with his lightsaber or the power of the Force. But he could attack the weapons themselves.

Reaching out with the Force, Vader found the gas canisters that provided the flamethrowers with their fuel. He gripped hold of all four of them simultaneously, and let the moment linger before he slowly, deliberately, began to crush each one as he had done so many beings' necks. The panic from each of his foes was palpable, and Vader drank it in, crushing the canisters harder and harder, the pressure inside each one building and building until …

Four explosions, four shrieks of pain and terror, four fewer hunters for Vader to concern himself with. Tarkin had escaped, and Vader's armour had been slightly damaged by the attack. Vader reproached himself for not sensing the presence of the flamethrower-wielding hunters, his fixation on Tarkin having got the best of him. But he would not make the same mistake again.

"I am coming for you, Governor Tarkin," he said, as though to the smoking, scattered remains of the hunters. "Make it worth my effort."


End file.
